Mycroft's website is certainly a website

I’d like to be prepared to infuse a personality matrix into a soul stone protection app that starts off as a voice recognition app, but I don’t want to use one from an evil corp. Fortunately, Mycroft may be a personal solve… but that would require using their website.

Screenshot_2020-08-20 Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant - Mycroft

The website as it load at first appears… “fine”. I mean, it has that Undraw-ish art across the screen, the “muzak” of corporate clip art. But of course a website can’t just appear fine, it has to, ya know, be processed by a human brain at some point.

I decided to not scroll, and instead look at only what is presented to me:

Screenshot_2020-08-20 Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant - Mycroft(1)

Hey, I like “open” and “private”, even if they kinda sound funny together in a sentence. But hey, the front page is where a project’s “voice” is established, and Mycroft is open and private, not a “voice” assistant.

Oh.

It’s okay,I can immediately download it…I think… or… pair device?

Undraw Person, what is this even going on about?

Screenshot_2020-08-20 Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant - Mycroft(2)

Oh, sorry! I see your magic greyboard has hidden your umbrella, and refuses to reveal it’s location (psst, it’s in the IKEA vase, next to the IKEA table, next to the IKEA plant atop the IKEA side table that stacks really well and is always out of stock).

Okay, let’s just keep going, I’m sure the essence of the project and some instructions on how to approach it will emerge:

Screenshot_2020-08-20 Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant - Mycroft(3)

Want to stay up to date with our patent case? New releases? Announcements? Subscribe here:

Wait, what?

  • patent case
  • new releases
  • announcements

One of these things is not like the other!

I don’t even know what “Subscribe here:” refers to (aside from challenging to comprehend), because what with the patent case and missing umbrella:

Screenshot_2020-08-20 Mycroft – The Open Source Privacy-Focused Voice Assistant - Mycroft(4)

We would like to use Cookies to perform analytics on what parts of our website are most popular and useful to our users. This information will only be used in aggregate, not to directly observe any single user’s actions. You can still use this website fully whether you participate or not. May we include you in this analysis?

Yes, sure!No, thanksRead more

I opted to “Read more” rather than continue on the page. I got the Mycroft Cookie policy page, a… cute mini-essay on how cookies are, like, just one word, ya know?

What’s all this about cookies?

“Cookies” are a building block of the modern web that can be used for many things. A cookie allows your browser to record information that can be used later when you revisit a website. This isn’t necessarily evil – a cookie might only record a preference like a chosen font size, if that is an option on the website. However they can also be used to save things like identifiers which can be used later to identify an individual.

Cookies and GDPR

Of the nearly 54,000 words in the GDPR, “cookie” only appears once. But the repercussions of this one word are huge. In essence, if a cookie can be combined with other information to potentially track a citizen of the European Union, then you must get permission from the person before you record that information.

Nearly every website in the world uses analytics of some form to determine if people are visiting their site. Detecting this requires recording a little information to distinguish unique users across the site, and cookies are the simplest way to achieve this.

Usage at mycroft.ai

We would like distinguish several pieces of information to allow us to improve our website and enhance the parts which are in demand:

  • How many users visit the website?
  • Which pages are they visiting?
  • How long do people read these pages on average? (Short visits indicate the page isn’t interesting/useful)

This is all examined in aggregate, not on an individual user basis. We use the industry standard Google Analytics tool to perform this. Additionally, users don’t need to participate in order to use our website fully.

While the GDPR only legally applies to citizens of the European Union, the spirit matches the ethos of Mycroft – users deserve the right to control their own privacy. We are continuing to evaluate and refine our published privacy policies and terms of use and to match our behavior and intentions. Read more about our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use via the links found on this and every page on the right hand side of the footer.

Wow, this sounds like a great AI base, because it already knows human bullshit logic loops.

Ahahaha, Google Analytics as “industry standard”! Pfft! Which “industry”? AI? Chat bots? Bull. Shit.

Here’s what would be really cool: share all your decisions you made based on tracking people through a website, and let the public decide if you made good decisions. Otherwise it is all an empty gesture and you are complicit in surveillance capitalism, the industry standard.


Hey tech drivel sites, why don’t you ever talk about this when you mention Mycroft? Oh, tech drivel sites. You gonna drivel!